


Choosing

by devovere



Series: Intimacies [7]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Depression, Dialogue Heavy, Edward Janeway - Freeform, Episode: s02e25 Resolutions, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Inspired by Novel, Justin Tighe - Freeform, Kolopak - Freeform, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, Mosaic, Parents, fathers, suppressed memory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 17:58:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14478135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovere/pseuds/devovere
Summary: Chakotay and Kathryn discuss losing their fathers, and more.





	Choosing

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this story predates this series by months and was inspired by an exchange of comments with lodessa, on her drabble “[Tell Me a Secret](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5577604/chapters/12855982)” It begins a couple days after “Slow Dance,” the previous story in this series. 
> 
> This story contains important spoilers for Jeri Taylor’s novel _Mosaic_. When I realized that it is set shortly before “Resolutions,” I felt I had to make its revelations part of Kathryn’s and Chakotay’s emerging relationship on New Earth. 
> 
> Heartfelt thanks to betas Killermanatee, who helped me find the right balance in a draft that started as dialogue-only, and Klugtiger, whose keen and careful eye for word choice and punctuation ensures maximum punch every time.

“You say I was young, but was it so different in your thirties?” Kathryn was on her stomach in bed, chin on her stacked fists, contemplating Chakotay as he lay on his back next to her, replete for the moment. Their pillow talk this evening had worked its way around again to their families, as they continued day by day to learn one another’s bodies and lives.

“Maybe the age doesn't matter so much. But we weren't close. You were.” His head rested on his linked hands, a bent elbow extending to either side. His eyes were closed in relaxation but he didn’t sound sleepy yet.

She thought about his statement. “I’m not sure ‘close’ is the right word. I wanted to be. Or, really, I just … wanted him to be proud of me.”

One eyelid rose halfway as he glanced at her sideways. “How could he not have been? You were doing everything right, everything a father could have hoped for in his daughter.”

“Mmm… maybe. I never felt sure of that. Of his good opinion. And he was _gone_ so much when I was growing up.”

“Whereas mine was always _there_ so much…” Somehow he saw her brief crooked smile. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing, really. It’s kind of sad, actually.” She turned on her side, facing him, propping herself up. “We basically wanted each other’s fathers instead of our own. Up to a point, at least.”

“When I was fifteen, I wished I had a dad who understood about wanting to join Starfleet and go to space. Now, though? I think I understand my father’s choices a little better.”

“How so?” She drew a finger lazily along his chest … just because she could, really. A week into this new intimacy, it was still a novelty to be able to touch his skin.

“All he really wanted was to build a strong family, contribute to a strong community. With strong roots. And now here _we_ are,” he smiled. “Putting down roots. It’s … satisfying. Worthwhile.”

His smile, as always, warmed her, but then she couldn’t help frowning. “No community, though. No family.” She drew her finger away from him and rested her hand on her bare hip.

He breathed that thought in for a moment, then seemed to breathe it back out as he rolled to face her. “You’re my family now, Kathryn,” he said seriously. When she met his eyes, though, he smiled and kissed her forehead.

She chuckled, looking up at him from under her eyelashes. “Just how many times are you going to kiss me today?”

“I don’t know. Have you been counting?”

“Just wondering.”

“Whatever number you’re up to?” He bent towards her further and rubbed his nose to hers. “Here. Add one to it,” he murmured, and kissed her on the lips.

“Mmm…” Her hand moved to his waist.

His smile grew against her mouth “Did I say one? I meant two, obviously.” He repeated the kiss, longer than the first one, until her fingers tightened against his skin.

She broke the kiss with a low laugh and rolled away from him, onto her back. “You’re _such_ a charmer. I wonder where you learned it?”

“My father, probably.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He and my mother were very much in love and very affectionate with each other. Even after four children and the relocation of our colony and everything else they went through.”

She turned her head to study his face. He was serious, under that easy smile of his. “That’s really admirable. You’re lucky you had that example.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve always wondered, though …”

“What?” She probed.

“I’m not sure how to express it. They could have left. They could have left Dorvan when things were getting bad. Some did. I would have helped; they knew that, I told them several times. I think either of them might have chosen to go, separately, but together they were determined to stay, each for the other.” He let the backs of his fingers graze her upper arm where it lay between them.

“What do you mean?”

His eyes were following his fingers, up and down her arm. “Their love gave them strength. It had seen them through other difficult times. But maybe it made them … a little foolhardy?” He sounded as if he was working it out in his head as he spoke. “Like my father thought he could face down Cardassians for my mother, and my mother thought her love could protect him from disruptor fire. Not literally, they weren’t delusional.” He met her gaze then, suddenly looking deep into her eyes. “But … that kind of faith, you know? It can ... make you believe.”

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

“Are you cold?”

“No. No, I’m fine. … How did your mother manage, after? After … loving him so long and then losing him so terribly?”

“I wish I knew.” The sudden bitterness in his voice startled her.

“I thought you went to her? The other night, you said --”

“I did. That’s not what I meant.” He ran his hand over his face. “She … managed. I don’t know how. I was too wrapped up in my own grief and anger to really see hers. Or she was too focused on me to let me see it. I don’t know.” He sighed. “I wanted revenge too much to just … sit with her, and draw her out. And then I left again, and it wasn’t safe for me to visit, or for her to communicate much. I -- “ He drew breath, sharply, and she turned towards him, her hand going to his chest. “God, Kathryn, I just _wish_. Before she was killed too. I wish I’d spent more time.”

His anguish stabbed her through the heart. “Come here,” she murmured.

His arm went around her waist and he buried his face against her neck, shuddering. The upwelling of grief seemed to pass through him quickly. Then he lay breathing against her for a time.

She thought he might fall asleep that way, until he spoke again, sounding clear and alert. “She would have loved you. They both would have.”

She kissed the top of his head. “I hope so. I’m sorry I never got to meet them.”

He rolled away a little to look at her face. “What about your mother? How did she cope with your father’s death?” Kathryn felt herself go subtly rigid all over.

“Like you … I’m afraid I … didn’t really pay attention at the time.” She couldn’t meet his eyes.

He paused, studying her expression. “You haven’t ever told me about his accident.”

“No. I haven’t.” She winced at how flat and harsh her voice sounded.

He let go of her completely. “The look in your eyes, Kathryn, it’s like -- “

Then words tumbled out of both them, each stepping on the other’s sentences.

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s --”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to --”

“I want to though. You probably deserve to know, and I want you to, it’s just --”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to upset you, I -”

“Chakotay. It’s okay. I think it might actually be good for me to talk about this. Now that I remember it all.”

His voice was low and intense. “What do you mean, now that you remember it all?”

“I was there. I was on the shuttle. I went down with them.”

“Kathryn, my god.” His hand hovered over her middle, hesitating to touch her. “How -- Wait, _them_? How many people were on that test flight?”

“Three of us. Daddy, and Justin, and me.” Her voice was steady and her eyes were fixed on his.

“Who was Justin?”

She took a deep breath. “My fiancé.”

“You called him Mark earlier. … I’m confused.”

“No wonder. … There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Chakotay.”

He tilted his head, digesting that idea. “Okay. So tell me. Please.”

\-----

Kathryn seemed to speak to the ceiling rather than to him. He pulled further away, trying to escape her peripheral vision, sensing that she needed distance to tell this tale.

“I met Justin on my first assignment.” Her voice was stern, almost as if berating her younger self for meeting someone. “We both served on the _Icarus_ , under Owen Paris -- Tom’s father, you know. We … fell in love, and came home engaged to be married.”

“Wow. Your first year out of the Academy? You couldn’t have been more than --”

“Twenty-three. Yeah. Really young to be making big life decisions like that. I know that now. At the time …” She raised both eyebrows in an “oh, well” gesture.

“I’m trying to imagine the man who could have swept you off your feet at twenty-three.”

“Justin was … remarkable. In so many ways.”

“Starfleet’s golden boy, no doubt. Born and bred to it like you?” He knew he sounded jealous: utterly pointless but undeniable.

She didn’t seem to notice. “Oh, no. Just the opposite. I’m sure people thought he was marrying up. Except it killed him.”

“Kathryn. You can’t mean that. How -- ? You mean the shuttle crash?”

“Yes. I don’t think Daddy even needed Justin; I’d done test flights with him before and could have handled the co-piloting. He was trying to welcome him into the family, or show me that he thought I’d … chosen well. Despite our differences.”

“And you lost them both at once.” He couldn’t imagine. He couldn’t stop imagining. He reached out with one hand, resting it lightly on her stomach.

Without looking away from the ceiling, she slowly brought both her hands to clasp his palm. She tugged their three hands together to her lips, kissing his knuckles lightly.

“I should have died, too.” She turned her head towards him as he pulled his hand free. “Don’t, Chakotay. Don’t look at me like that, don’t argue. I know you would never agree. But it’s the truth.” She reeled off the evidence in a dry and almost dispassionate voice.

“It should have been me in that co-pilot’s chair, not Justin. Instead I was in the back, but so what? The crash still should have killed me. Some flaw in the design when we hit wind shear; what killed _them_ saved me. The aft section broke free in mid-air, and the drogue system and a snowbank let me survive.” She paused for breath, then pronounced with deliberation, “I survived, and was conscious, and still ... couldn’t save them.”

“They weren’t killed on impact?”

“I thought they were, until very recently. I … forgot a lot of what happened, what I did. What I didn’t do.”

“When did you remember? How?”

“A couple months before we came here. You remember the Trakath? The away team we almost had to abandon?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The memory resurfaced on the bridge. Right before I turned us back the final time to retrieve them.”

“You’re telling me that during one of the most stressful moments of your captaincy, you were dealing with new memories of the most traumatic event in your life?”

“Yes.”

“You … ” He swallowed, to little effect. “You astound me. Again. All over again. Just … wow.”

“Good wow?”

He suddenly clasped her to him, hard.

She tolerated his display of helpless emotion for a few moments and then gently but firmly began to extricate herself.

He released her.

She swallowed, seeming to gather courage. “Chakotay.”

She was still _confessing_.

“I killed them. One of them, at least. No, both of them, really.” Her voice was a knife, slicing open veins.

“ _What_?? No, the crash --”

“Daddy. Or Justin. I could have saved one of them. I had a working console and enough energy for one transport. I wasted time cobbling more together, to get them both. They sank below the ice. I didn’t get either of them.” She delivered each short, declarative sentence like a series of hammer blows ... or torpedo strikes.

“Oh, Kathryn. … Of course you blame yourself.”

“I could have _saved_ one of them.”

“Maybe, but … how could you have chosen? You thought you had another solution.”

“That’s _exactly it_ , Chakotay. I could have saved one of them, but I couldn’t choose. I couldn’t choose Justin over Daddy, so I killed Justin. I couldn’t choose Daddy over Justin, so I killed Daddy. _I couldn’t choose_. So they both died.”

The magnitude of what she was saying finally sank in for him. He took in a shuddering breath.

“You carried this burden around all these years and never told anyone? … I’m sorry, you already said you couldn’t remember it.”

At last, she turned to him and seemed to soften. “Actually, in retrospect, I wonder if somehow I did know.”

“What do you mean?” He stroked her arm.

“I was devastated, afterward. Couldn’t function. They fixed me up physically, and then my mother took me home and … I went to bed and waited to die. For months.”

“That’s hard to imagine. I mean, it’s understandable, given what you’d been through, but … You’re so vivacious, Kathryn, and so determined. It hurts to imagine you so hopeless.”

“I wonder now if my subconscious memories were driving that. Phoebe said I was being self-indulgent. My sister. She’s the one who finally pulled me out of it. Not gently.” She smiled wryly.  

“Phoebe saved my life, and I’m pretty sure my mother saved my career, pulling strings. Maybe with Owen Paris. Someone managed to keep the episode out of my file. I had medical and bereavement leave, and later I could say I’d been waiting to enter command school, so it didn’t look like such a black hole in my record.”

“Forgive me, Kathryn, I’ve always wondered … why command school, right after the accident? You love science, and you’d barely begun that career.”

She looked away, very far away, barely breathing.

“I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”

“No, it’s a good question. I just realized that the answer … isn’t what I always thought it was. Owen Paris, on the _Icarus_ , was the first person to tell me I should switch to command track. I thought, ‘Well, if Daddy thinks it’s a good idea, I probably will.’”

“So you were still trying to please your father?”

She smiled sadly. “No, actually. He wouldn’t tell me what to do, but he did say he regretted all the time he’d had to spend away from us.” The smile vanished, leaving only sadness. “Justin and I were going to marry and start a family. So I decided to stay in science, and find assignments closer to home.”

“But then … the accident.”

“I thought … well … no family in my future, and command would let me follow Daddy’s footsteps, now that he was gone.”

“You were honoring his memory, after your world was turned upside down. I know that dance, Kathryn.”

She gazed at him, seeing him and her past self in equal measure. “Yes. At least, that’s what I told myself then.”

“And now?”

“Now … I think I wanted to learn how to make hard decisions. _How to choose_.”

She stared deep into him, waiting for his judgment. All he could offer was the truth.

“You learned, Kathryn. I’ve seen you do it. Many times. You learned.”

“I know,” she said. Then, almost in a whisper, “I hope I’m never faced with that sort of choice again, though.”

“I know.”

They held each other close against the brutal past. He stroked her hair, and she wrapped herself around him, half on his body, clinging like a child until her eyes closed and her muscles eventually relaxed into sleep.

He stayed awake for a long time, thinking. He’d built his life around protecting Kathryn and lightening her load, but past trauma resisted such vows. Nor could he protect her from having to make hard decisions in the future.

He’d meant it, when he’d said she was his family now. What he knew about family was to show them his love and keep faith in them. That he could do. And he would.

And maybe, someday, she would love him back.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. I invite and appreciate feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
>   * <3 as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> [LLF Comment Builder](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/post/170952243543/now-presenting-the-llf-comment-builder-beta) may be a useful resource for some. 
> 
> I reply to comments. That means you can expect me to reply to your comment, eventually and barring unforeseen circumstances. (Once in a while I miss or don't receive a notification, for example.) 
> 
> If you _don’t_ want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper.” I will appreciate it but not respond.


End file.
